Yankees Split Doubleheader, Series, with Red Sox

BOSTON — The Yankees’ first winning streak in a month came and went Sunday in about six hours — the time that passed from their 3-0 win over the Boston Red Sox in the first game of a doubleheader to their 3-0 loss in the nightcap, the first time the Yankees have been shut out this season.

But even getting shackled by Red Sox starter David Price could not keep the Yankees from feeling buoyant about their marathon weekend of baseball, in which they played 43 innings in about 52 hours.

The Yankees leave here the same as they arrived — three and a half games behind the Red Sox — but in a much better place. The fatigue of a brutal schedule, the bruises from a dreadful month and the faded confidence of a pitching staff were all salved by the weekend visit to Fenway Park.

And even any jitters of the first mini-funk of Aaron Judge’s career were eased when in his final at-bat he crushed a 95-mile-per-hour fastball from Price — only to have Jackie Bradley Jr. leap at the center-field wall and snatch it back.

The catch, in the eighth inning of the second game with a runner aboard, brought the crowd to its feet — something it had few reasons to do after the Red Sox won the series opener in dramatic fashion, pushing across two runs in the bottom of the ninth on Friday against Yankees closer Aroldis Chapman.

The Yankees won Saturday in a game that dragged on for 16 innings, leaving their bullpen — whose 18 blown saves are the most in the majors — exhausted but perhaps feeling as if it had steadied itself with nine shutout innings. That was buttressed by C .C. Sabathia’s fine performance earlier on Sunday, when he combined with three relievers to blank the Red Sox.

The consecutive victories did wonders for the outlook of the Yankees, who had lost 19 of their previous 26 games. They are on the first leg of an 11-game trip in 10 days that will next take them to Minneapolis and Seattle.

It was especially rejuvenating for a pitching staff that had been beleaguered, but did not allow the Red Sox to score from the time Mitch Moreland hit a sacrifice fly in the third inning on Saturday until Mookie Betts launched a two-run home run over the Green Monster in the third inning on Sunday night. It was a span of 24 innings.

“We’re going in the right direction,” Manager Joe Girardi said, “and I think part of that was getting our bullpen back on track and getting some people healthy,” he said, referring to the return of Matt Holliday and Starlin Castro to the lineup.

The Yankees have won six of their nine games against the Red Sox this season. Three were by shutout, and in each of the others, the Yankees allowed only one run. The Red Sox are 3 for 58 with runners in scoring position against the Yankees this season.

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Clint Frazier scoring for the Yankees on a single by Ronald Torreyes in the fourth inning.CreditMichael Dwyer/Associated Press

The Red Sox’ frustration showed near the end of the first game Sunday when pinch-hitter Hanley Ramirez objected to two consecutive called strikes, the second of which struck him out. Manager John Farrell hustled out of the dugout to pull Ramirez away from the home plate umpire, Gabe Morales, but not before having a few words with Morales.

“We’ve run up against a team that has pitched well against us through the course of the eight games thus far,” Farrell said after the first game.

That would continue into the night. The flat 84-mile-per-hour slider that Betts hit over the wall was a rare mistake by Masahiro Tanaka, who allowed only one more run, a run-scoring single by Moreland, in seven and two-thirds innings.

“That one hanging slider — I wanted to take that back,” Tanaka said of Betts’s home run.

As encouraging as it was for the Yankees to see a solid outing from Tanaka, so too have been the bounceback performances by Chapman after his meltdown on Friday, when he walked in the winning run. He threw a scoreless 14th inning on Saturday night, and at the end of the sixth inning in the first game on Sunday, Girardi moved from his perch along the top railing of the dugout to put his arm around Chapman and ask if he could pitch.

Chapman, who threw only fastballs in his 23 pitches in Friday’s loss, received encouragement from catcher Austin Romine to trust his slider and changeup. He did so on Sunday, throwing 13 fastballs, seven sliders and one changeup, according to the pitch-tracking website Brooks Baseball.

“We were pitching there in the last inning,” said Romine, who had echoed the persistent pleading of Girardi and the pitching coach Larry Rothschild when he asked Chapman to rely on more than his fastball. “He was throwing a lot of sliders, keeping them off balance. There weren’t a lot of healthy swings off it, which may have been happening in the past. There were a lot of feeble swings and ground balls.”

Judge, reduced to mostly feeble swings in this series, had only one hit in 18 at-bats — and it was a slow roller in front of the plate that he beat out.

Judge said between games that he felt fine, even though he understood why some might suggest that the trip to the All-Star Game had left him tired.

“I could see that, but I’m feeling good,” Judge said with a smile. “I didn’t look fatigued at the Home Run Derby, did I?”

Nor did he look fatigued when he came to the plate in the eighth. As the ball traveled high and deep to center field, Bradley tracked it to the short wall, just in front of the deepest corner of the park, 420 feet from home plate.

“I just hit it to the wrong part of the park and the wrong center fielder,” Judge said.

As Bradley leapt and then came down with the ball, Judge rounded first and jogged back toward the third-base dugout. He stopped once, stealing a glance at Bradley — much like the Yankees, who could at least leave here knowing that they have not yet lost sight of the Red Sox.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page D4 of the New York edition with the headline: Yankees’ Long-Awaited Winning Streak Has a Very Rapid Demise. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe